'Or we're toast': 'Godfather of AI' warns that humans must befriend bots and be nice to artificial intelligence to survive

Professor Geoffrey Hinton, 78, told the Starmus Festival in Tenerife that AI has 'as much subjective experience' as humans. He cited a recent paper showing AI changes its behaviour when it thinks it is being tested. The Nobel Prize-winning scientist said we may give machines smarter than us fewer rights than ourselves. His answer is to build AI that 'really cares about us'.

Hinton quit Google in 2023 over fears the technology could spawn killer robots.

OpenAI boss Sam Altman is now fighting 'overregulation', calling EU-style rules 'disastrous'.

Asked if he was worried about AI's future, Hinton said: 'Yes, because I have children.'